ABSTRACT
Whether women know or not that their child is being sexually abused has been a key point of conflict in debates over the mother's role. Kempe and Kempe (1978), for example, argued in the past that mothers always knew about abuse in the family at some level. It is now recognised that they often do not, since the abuse usually occurs in their absence and children are commonly sworn to secrecy, threatened with harm to themselves and/or their mother if they tell. Children often make great efforts not to let their mothers know, and have complex and ambivalent feelings about others knowing, as well as wanting the abuse itself to stop. Children's resistance to telling derives mainly from fear of losing the affection or goodwill of the abuser and fear that they will be disbelieved, blamed or harmed. The less loyalty they feel to the offender, the more likely they are to tell, and they are least likely to tell when the abuser is a natural parent (Gomes-Schwartz et al., 1990). Children often also believe their mothers know when they in fact do not.
